It is an important election year in the City of Rochester.
Bill Johnson is retiring after 12 years as mayor. Three important long-time
City Councilmembers will be leaving. Rochester, despite its deep, unique
resources, is facing enormous challenges: job loss, tax-base erosion, the
flight of well-educated young people, a federal government that is ignoring the
needs of cities, continuing suburban sprawl, and a staggering concentration of
poverty.
Despite those challenges, Rochester has made significant
strides under Johnson and his predecessor, the late Tom Ryan. City Hall has a
record of fiscal responsibility and professionalism. Basic city services are delivered competently. And despite the sprawl, Rochester is by no means a dying city. Property values in some neighborhoods are increasing. Market-rate housing is
growing downtown. Arts institutions and museums continue to be crucial
components of the city’s economy and quality of life. There are outstanding
examples of excellence in the Rochester school district. Downtown’s East End
district is thick with people on weekend nights.
The potential is there. But so is the danger. If we do not
take the right steps in the next few years, if we do not move aggressively in
the right directions, Rochester could become a dying city.
Can we attract new business? Can we make significant strides
in providing education, job training, and jobs for our poorest neighbors? Can
we be a community that attracts, rather than repels, bright young adults?
Rochester has the potential. We will need a mayor of unique
talent and ability to tap it. Among the Democrats running in their party’s
September 13 primary, we believe that person is Wade Norwood.
For the editorial
staff at this newspaper, this has been a difficult decision. Four Democrats
are competing in the primary. (Attorney John Parrinello is the Republican
candidate in the November general election.) Newcomer Chris Maj, as we have
noted previously, has neither the experience nor the understanding of
government that qualifies him to serve. But each of the other Democrats —
Norwood, former Police Chief Bob Duffy, and City Councilmember Tim Mains — is
more than just competent.
Each is a passionate person, intensely committed to the
city. Each has great professional and personal strengths. Each would do a good
job as mayor. If one of them is elected in the November election, Rochester
will be in good hands, and the staff at this newspaper will not be
disappointed, regardless of the outcome of the primary.
But Norwood’s exceptional combination of skills and talent
earned our endorsement.
Norwood is bright, charismatic, and personable. After 15
years on City Council, he knows Rochester well. He knows its attributes. And he
knows not only its problems but their complexity. He has specific ideas about
what needs to be done to address them.
He is a consensus builder.
He has a clear vision of what City Hall should be, and what
it could be if he were mayor. He has true leadership qualities. And he is a
great salesman.
The importance of sales ability can not be dismissed.
Rochester’s next mayor must be able to rally its citizens. He must build trust
and conviction among suburban residents and their elected officials. He must
convince county leaders that the health of the city is indeed in their best
interest — that county assistance now, for example, means lower county
expenses and greater job growth in the future.
Of all the candidates, Norwood best addressed those needs in
his conversations with us.
Norwood does not have the name recognition that Duffy
generated as police chief. In large part, that’s because of Rochester’s
strong-mayor form of government, and the way City Council has worked under it.
The mayor initiates much of what City Council considers. The mayor, not
individual City Councilmembers, gets the television and newspaper exposure —
as does the police chief, of course.
Norwood does have a record of accomplishment on City
Council, including helping insure that Hickey Freeman stayed in Rochester. It
is no small thing that nearly every member of City Council is supporting his
campaign for mayor.
Finally, we gave great weight to Norwood’s experience in
politics, particularly his experience in state government as special assistant
to Assemblymember David Gantt. It’s popular to denigrate politicians, and to
consider lack of political experience and connections as a plus. That’s a
serious mistake. The mayor’s job is a
political job. A successful mayor must be able to chart the city’s way through
some pretty treacherous waters politically.
We are particularly concerned about Rochester’s fiscal
condition. Unquestionably, the city must find ways to grow its tax base. But
that won’t happen overnight, and recent Kodak announcements make it clear that
the erosion will continue. Rochester must get a fair share of state aid, which
it has not been able to do recently. Norwood’s knowledge of Albany and his
connections there give us hope that he could change that.
That said, we have
two serious concerns about Norwood. The first: He has conducted a
disappointing, harsh, personal, misleading, and needlessly negative campaign
against Bob Duffy. He has mercilessly criticized Duffy’s reorganization of the
police department, when Norwood himself voted in favor of it. Norwood might
just as well blame City Council for approving the plan as blame Duffy for
implementing it.
Norwood has also blamed Duffy for Rochester’s crime rate.
Norwood knows that crime in Rochester — including murder — is substantially
lower than it was in the early 1990s. And he knows that while there are things
a police department can do, poverty, joblessness, and drugs are the driving
forces, not the police chief.
That kind of campaign is more than unfair to a talented
former police chief. It spreads the impression, in Rochester’s suburbs and
beyond, of a city in which no one would want to live or invest.
Finally, Norwood has criticized Duffy for sending his
daughter to parochial school (called “a private school in Brighton” in the
Norwood ads). Parents make school choices for many reasons. A strong religious
commitment and family tradition is not something to be mocked.
We were disturbed and saddened by Norwood’s campaign
tactics. They are completely out of character, and make us worry about what
they represent. The campaign made us question his judgment, and it very nearly
cost him our endorsement. More important, we’re confident that it will cost him
votes.
Our second concern: His proposal to have the school
superintendent report to the mayor. This is a seductive idea, and Norwood makes
the most emotionally convincing argument for it that we’ve heard. But it’s not
who the superintendent reports to that’s causing Rochester’s poorest children
to do so poorly in school. It’s Rochester’s high concentration of poverty.
Having the superintendent report to the mayor won’t change that.
The next mayor will have more than enough to do to manage
City Hall. Working for a structural change in the school district would sap the
mayor’s time and energy and accomplish nothing. Rochester would be better
served by having the mayor drum up support for Superintendent Manny Rivera’s
Children’s Zone proposal.
Tim Mains
The brightest candidate in this campaign is unquestionably
Tim Mains. He has demonstrated sharp scrutiny and analysis in his 20 years on
City Council. He has a firm grasp of city and regional issues — and, most
importantly, their complexity. He, more than the other candidates, focuses on
one of the principal root causes of Rochester’s problems: concentrated poverty.
As a long-time educator and now principal of Rochester’s
School 50, he has the clearest understanding of the Rochester school district
and student achievement problems.
Mains does more than analyze, though. He looks for
solutions. He comes up with creative ideas. We’d bet that if Mains isn’t
elected mayor, the winner will pursue his Pioneer Tax Credit plan, which would
give tax relief to commercial property owners for substantial investment in
their property.
Mains has a strong, clear, sophisticated vision, and he does
the best job of all the candidates in expressing that vision.
He shaped and expanded the Greece School District’s Teaching
and Learning Center, and in his job at School 50, he seems to be a thoughtful,
popular, effective principal. He has had to make tough management decisions,
good experience for running any operation. He knows and understands the city
budget better than anyone else on City Council.
He is energetic almost to a fault, an absolutely tireless
worker.
Our principal concern about Mains: How effective he would be
as mayor. Ideas are important, but mayors must sell them. Mains doesn’t seem to
have been able to sell other City Councilmembers on many of his ideas. He has
sometimes been an outsider. That’s been a valuable attribute on City Council,
but it could be a handicap in trying to lead the city, where getting consensus
among other elected officials will be critical.
We worry that he would have a tough time building consensus
among Rochester’s divided state delegation, something that will be essential if
Rochester is to keep its finances stable, and move forward.
Bob Duffy
Rochester’s former police chief has the highest name
recognition of any of the candidates. And that name recognition is a positive
one. That speaks volumes about his record as police chief, and about his
character.
He has served a diverse population, and he is extremely
popular. Tall, imposing, and intensely likeable, he has an almost rock-star
quality. That popularity will be important to Rochester if he is elected mayor.
He may not be the salesman that Wade Norwood is, but his popularity gives him
clout.
He was a good manager of the Rochester Police Department,
dedicated and creative, bringing a raft of innovative programs to address the
city’s serious crime problem. He is not afraid to make unpopular decisions and
to ride out the criticism.
He showed the depth of his toughness and his character in
1990 when, as a young lieutenant, he was tapped to investigate civil-rights
violations by Rochester police officers. The chief of police had been arrested
for embezzlement, and several officers were accused of police brutality —
including throwing suspects down the stairs and forcing their heads into
toilets. This was a traumatic time for Rochester and for police officers. Duffy
was harshly criticized by the police union; he stood up to that criticism,
writing an eloquent op-ed piece in the Democrat
and Chronicle opposing excessive use of force by police.
Since that period, there has been no love lost between the
union and Duffy. Despite that, Duffy was able to build a strong record as
police chief.
He continued his predecessor’s efforts in wresting some
control from the police union, gaining more flexibility in assigning officers
and in putting more police on the streets. He has searched out and promoted men
and women of color.
During one terrible year of his tenure as chief, four
African-American men died while in police custody. Duffy’s calm, his actions,
and his reputation helped keep the city from exploding. While he certainly has
critics in the black community, he is extremely popular in much of it.
He clearly understands Rochester, and repeatedly notes that
education, economic development, and public safety are “inextricably linked.”
And clearly, he has a good understanding of city government, though not at the
level of Mains and Norwood. Our concerns:
His lack of political experience could hurt him, or at the
least, slow his progress. Just as seriously, he is far less substantive than
Mains and Norwood when he discusses the issues. He often says he’ll appoint
“leadership councils” or “impact teams” to address Rochester’s problems. Study
is important, as is collaboration. But we are worried about Duffy’s lack of
specifics and lack of heft, of substance, in his discussions with us. That
combined with his lack of political experience make him a slightly weaker
candidate to us.
The September 13
primary will be decided, of course, by voters, not by newspaper
endorsements. If you’re a registered Rochester Democrat, we urge you to do what
we did. Make a list of the things you hope will change in Rochester. Study what
the candidates have to say about those issues. Read the newspaper coverage of
the campaign. (Our extensive interviews with the candidates are available —
free — on our website, www.rochester-citynews.com; click the Elections 2005
tab). Watch the televised debates. Attend community forums.
Then get to the polls on September 13.
This article appears in Aug 31 – Sep 6, 2005.
